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23.06.10
Do you think people have an essential characteristic which manifests itself in the material things they produce beyond their conscious control? Looking at art and design, could I make a painting that doesn't look at all like one of my previous paintings? Or would I fall back on favoured colours, compositions, and lines. I guess the question I'm asking is whether or not someone could change their sense of design enough to erase themselves. Through mechanical middlemen of computers and cameras, maybe, but by hand? I'm not so sure.
22.06.10
"One-third-life crisis"? "Two-fifths"?
20.06.10
Pet peeve: when books get published with errors in the capitalization of scientific names of organisms. Even in multiple reprints. Of the recent books I've gone through Midnight's Children has this problem. So does Oryx and Crake, a book named after two animals written by the daughter of a biologist. You'd think copy editors would know; always capitalize the genus but not the species epithet and italicize both. Dacrymyces palmatus, Thuja plicata, Homo sapiens.
14.06.10
Really, that's enough about vampires.
05.06.10
Let's not do any more months like the last one. Way too much overtime, way too much stress.
They shut down one of the train stations for a few days. A notice went up a while ago; a notice full of small type on a sandwich board at the entrance/exit to the station. If I'm at the station, I'm either trying to beat everyone else to the bus stop or running to the platform to catch the train. I'm not looking to read a novel at the entrance.
Someone figured out that this was ineffective, so a new notice went up, with a larger headline, then a page full of small text. This went on a larger sign and was placed right in front of the escalator on the way out. The headline could be parsed while walking, which informed you of the closure, but not the alternative routes. I saw a couple people stop to read the whole thing, but in this position they blocked the exit to the escalator.
Someone slighty smarter put a copy next to the elevator buttons, so people waiting for the elevator could read it.
Did anyone think of putting something on the outbound platform where everyone stands around? Or what about the bus stop? I ended up going to the website, though I barely remembered to do this, where I found out what was happening (some private function, which I was surprised to learn is allowed to shut down public transit on a weekday) and the bus re-routes.
As it turns out I had a couple other places to hit that day and never went by the station at all. Yay for being ineffective and ultimately irrelevant.
I picked up some stuff for work in a part of the city where skinny pants, vintage gear, and facial hair would have blended me right in. Only being able to do one of the above (on short notice, at least) I grabbed my c.1970 airline travel bag and took a stroll. Lots of stores displayed neat useless things, clothes marked up 100% from the thrift store whence they came, and some total crap. Given, there was a lot of local design, two cafes had live music going on, and few chain stores were in sight. I was also approached by a guy and a girl in matching t-shirts from a Very Good Cause with a number bib; they asked if I could read something, which caused me to instantly recoil, having narrowly escaped the return of the Very Earnest Men in Suits this morning. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a passage from Romeo and Juliet in which we all had parts.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked.
"Urban scavenger hunt."
"...sure." And we were off and running with some impromptu street theatre. Under the watchful gaze of a scavenger hunt official, we performed our scene in which I warned Juliet to look about her, gave them a handshake, and left the star cross'd lovers to merge back into the life of the street.
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